


Chaos Calling

by CreamcheeseBagel



Series: Surviving South Park [2]
Category: South Park
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Angst with a Happy Ending, Artist Kenny McCormick, Artist Leopold "Butters" Stotch, Blood and Injury, Canon-Typical Behavior, Canon-Typical Violence, Double Life, F/M, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Butters, POV Kenny, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-07 07:48:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21212417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CreamcheeseBagel/pseuds/CreamcheeseBagel
Summary: Butters feels left behind; Kenny is moving away to start a new life with Kyle. If only he could ignite a little chaos to keep his friends forever.Chaos captured Mysterion’s jaw firmly, squeezing until his fingertips felt numb, and tilted the vigilantes head back as though sharing a kiss. With his free hand, Chaos unpeeled the domino mask.





	Chaos Calling

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I've revisited this and edited the majority. Now this links more directly to the third piece where Craig and Tweek have moved away from SP. 
> 
> Still, I hope you enjoy!

Butters winced for the sixth time that night, his gloved hands picking at the too-tight underwear beneath the flush green trousers. The foundation around his left eye patchy and dry. A curt reminder that he had escaped from his room, to disobey his Father’s orders and scour the city.

Donning the costume usually made him feel powerful, a man at sixteen.

Butters shuddered inwardly. He didn’t feel powerful tonight; the hammer felt too heavy; the cape stifling. He stared at the utility belt in his hands, rammed with vials his subordinates had lovingly concocted.

He looked around the empty catwalks, each held high above the rushing water. A small part of him begged him to go home and be reasonable, but Chaos was louder.

‘Step back, Chaos!’

The gruff bark cut through the sloshing of water, sharp like a slap.

Chaos smiled wickedly as he turned, his lips twitching upwards at Mysterion’s new limp. He had felt briefly elated shoving the masked man from a rooftop. Had laughed as the body slipped from the lid of an over-flowing dumpster.

Mysterion interrupted, coughing. ‘Innocent people will die’. Chaos watched the man stagger forwards, a hand fisted in his trousers to keep it moving.

‘Complacent people,’ Chaos corrected, tossing the belt behind him. The belt clattered to a stop. He walked to meet the vigilante. He jabbed a finger before him. ‘Dirty mongrels like you. It’s only a little poison to punish them‘.

Mysterion growled low in his throat.

‘Why stop me? This shit-hole is a cesspit. They all need to be cleansed! Or better yet, reminded that they’re worthless,’ Professor Chaos snarled, punching the hammer deep into his assailant’s ribs.

He couldn’t lose here too. The belt was inches away. In his heart he knew the concoction wouldn’t kill anyone, but keep enough people bed bound.

Regardless, they all deserved to be punished.

‘You’re better than this,’ Mysterion coughed, lurching backwards. Red flicked upwards from his broken nose, droplets spraying against Professor Chaos face as it twisted in disgust. Mysterions lips split into a quivering smile beneath the cowl, his stare unsteady. ‘They don’t deserve this..’ he coughed wetly into the fabric.

‘They don’t?’ Chaos sneered, his fingers firm. He brought the hammer down against Mysterion’s chest. ‘You defend those monsters. You excuse their crimes’ he tossed the hammer aside, striking the domino mask with a thump. Mysterion blinked back blood. ‘You let them continue! They’ll betray you too! Just like they did me! They’ll leave you to rot’.

‘I guide them,’ Mysterion croaked, swaying as he stood. ‘They can be better, if you let them. Show them’. He grew heavy in Chaos’s hands. Chaos shoved the deadweight away, kicking the vigilante further down the catwalk.

Chaos strode slowly after Mysterion, enjoy the click of his heels against the metal.

Mysterion clambered to his feet as soon as he rolled, hunched over the utility belt. His narrowed eyes shone triumphant.

Chaos hated those violet eyes.

‘If you drop the belt and they smash, I win’ Chaos pointed the hammer like a sword. ‘How many bolts could you take? Before your legs give out?’. The confidence fed from his adrenaline, growing into a hysterical laugh. It bubbled from his lips, leaving him shaking behind his weapon.

‘We don’t have to find out!’ Mysterion shouted, the utility belt hugged tight to his chest. Chaos could see from the shake of the vigilantes legs how much effort it was too stand.

Chaos curled his free hand, raking the gloved fingers down his face. He covered his eyes, still giggling. He scissored his fingers apart, staring openly at Mysterion. His chest felt warm in the glow of Mysterion’s startled wheeze.

‘I. Do.’

The wooden handle of the hammer creaked as the metal began to heat. The weapon thrummed hot and steady. Chaos imagined the gruff voice growing lighter, pleading, weedy and scared.

‘Oh-‘ Butters gasped, wide-eyed, at the lightning arching from the hammer head. The cry of metal screeched around him. His arm snapped upwards as if violently jerked. The lightning blackened the ceiling and stopped with a small fizzle. ‘No’. Butters stumbled forwards into a run, chasing the after-image of Mysterion disappearing over the rails.

The water continued to churn and roll, as unrepentant as before. A single black domino mask blighting the clear water.  
  


***

  
Kenny sobbed soundlessly as he coughed water into the bathroom sink. His fingers tickled the back of his throat. Leaning into the basin, his knees trembled in the water-logged trousers. Another bout of water slapped into the sink. Kenny darkly wished he’d drowned instead.

  
He turned to the reflection of his scowling friend. Kyle scowled extra hard; it was too early in the morning to shout.

‘I remember you leaving,’ Kyle mumbled around a yawn. ‘I’m glad you didn’t die, again’. He'd awoken around six to hear Kenny knocking about in the bathroom.

Kenny pulled a towel around his shoulders, grateful Kyle remembered. He smiled thinly, too bone tired to quip back and break the tension.

‘It’s easier with the memory exercises’ Kyle said around a further yawn, shrugging at Kenny’s unashamed smile. He turned his attention to his phone and began to fire a one-handed text. ‘Stan’s getting off his night-shift in about an hour,’ Kyle explained.

Kenny pinched a nostril and shot a spray of water into the sink. ‘He’s welcome to come home and tuck me in’.

Kyle flipped him off, channelling Craig spookily well.

Kenny stripped in silence, unashamed, allowing Kyle to finish his text conversation. He unpeeled his costume and stashed it in his backpack; he’d wash it after Stan had left for his last shift of the week.

Kenny played with a speck of blood stuck to a tooth, wondering if Professor Chaos was waking up to a friend. If it were Cheerio’s or brooding for breakfast. Did the man have a family, someone who loved him, anyone who questioned his absence?

Only Kyle understood now. Only Kyle noticed the long stretches of times between each of Kenny’s deaths.

It was often Kyle who appeared bleary-eyed, annoyed but unyielding, to smuggle Mysterion into the shared apartment. Kyle had even joked about sharing a room, once the trio moved out of town, to make it easier for Mysterion to come and go.

The trio were moving in a handful of months and Kenny hoped Kyle would stay true to his word.

With a snort Kenny scratched the small scar beneath his jaw. A gift from Kyle. He had been a boy when he’d snapped the pieces in place; Mysterion had died before his eyes, blasted into oblivion with bullets; only for Kenny to rise days later with a renewed anxiety of guns. 

Upon being interrogated about the clear correlations between the men, and their coincidental disappearances, Kyle had whacked Kenny with his calculator and called him a fucking idiot for keeping him in the dark.

Kyle to this day would refuse to explain just how he had come to truly know about the alter-ego, and Kenny had stopped asking. The shared knowledge was kept private from Stan, who had still yet to remember any of Kenny’s deaths. 

‘Do you think Chaos has friends?’ Kenny asked, thankful he had fierce friends to keep him in check whether cloaked or not.

‘No!’ scoffed Kyle, pocketing his phone. ‘Idiot runs around in pyjamas hitting people’.

‘You used to hit people, Kyle’ Kenny supplied with a sly smile, his fingers tracing a familiar character into the bathroom mirror.

‘Fucking hit you in a minute if you don’t fuck off!’ Kyle grumbled, ever so sleep deprived. ‘Does it even matter? I need to make sure you don’t look like death before you see Butters. Poor guy will panic'.

Kenny hummed, naked as the day he was born.

'I think he needs a friend’

‘I think you need help’

Kenny ducked behind the still damp towel, holding it out like a shield. ‘If you have a spare hand!’. He heard Kyle groan and peeked out gingerly, blinking innocently.

‘If I didn’t have college in a few hours, I’d kick your fucking arse’.

‘Should I ask nicely?’

Kyle chucked his arms in the air, groaning dramatically. ‘Just get some clothes on and get in the fucking car. I’ll drive you to your dumb arts and craft shit’.

‘Does that mean you won’t be playing nurse now?’

‘If you’re this shitty first thing in the morning,’ Kyle sighed, pinching his nose, ‘you can’t be too injured!’

‘I’m always shitty…’

‘I know!’ Kyle groaned, averting his eyes from Kenny’s naked torso. Kenny could see the blush capturing his ears. ‘I need to get Craig and Karen too, so we can’t be late!'

‘Yes, Sir!’ Kenny saluted.

***

  
Butters scratched the lid of his pen against his dead-eye, trying to alleviate the dull ache behind the scar. He’d grown used to the cloudy vision, images caught in a permanent haze as though he had emerged from a pool. When it grew bitterly cold his eye would ache and it was easier to wear an eyepatch.

Today he welcomed the throb and closed his left eye to focus on the nude model before him. The model was a larger man, standing proud. Something about the stance made him feel imposing. Butters began to sketch the man slighter than his frame, with longer arms and hunched shoulders.

Butter smiled warmly as Kenny took his usual place on the stool beside him, off to his right but close enough their knees could bump. It was only eight in the morning, with the sky still gloomy, yet Kenny never missed the early morning class despite how tired he would look.

The pair both worked part time jobs but made time to meet for the life-drawing classes. At the beginning Butters had shared his own doodles with Kenny, blushing hard over the excessive fight scenes. But Kenny had absorbed the messy sketches and purchased the pair matching sketchbooks with his first legitimate pay cheque; Butters had surprised his friend with an array of pencils and pens the day after. He’d stuffed them deep into Kenny’s backpack and threatened to stop drawing if he tried to give them back. 

It had since become a ritual that the pair met stupidly early to share coffee and draw genitalia. Soon Kenny was to move away with Kyle and Stan; even Craig and Tweek were following suite. Butters hated that the local university wasn’t closer.

Butters began to watch Kenny sketch shamelessly. From his tongue peeking ever so slightly over a split lip, upwards to a yellowing bruise around his right cheekbone.

‘I think a split lip looks quite sexy,’ Kenny whispered and Butters blushed at having been caught so soon. ‘Got drunk round Craig’s is all. Idiot didn’t catch me so I kissed the carpet’, he continued nonchantly, shrugging and flipping through his sketchbook.

‘Thought you were watching a film with Kyle?’, Butters questioned, noting how true to life Kenny’s sketch had already become compared to his. It wasn’t even nine and his inadequacies were glaring.

‘Stan got super drunk and kept kissing Wendy. Kyle went to bed early,’ Kenny smiled with another shrug. It wasn’t a lie as per say, he had infact left Stan at home with his girlfriend, Kyle playing third wheel.   
Kenny had just ended up at Craig’s later, waited for him to pass out drunk with Tweek and fled into the night. 

‘Hey, yours kinda looks like a superhero!’ Kenny nudged Butters knee with a quirked brow.

‘Ah, gee. Guess I’m still not very good at drawing real people.'

Kenny bumped his friend’s knee. ‘Superheroes are real people, dude!’

‘Villians are cooler..'

‘Reminds me of Mysterion,’ Kenny whispered whimsically, focusing squarely on the model now.

Butters tore the page from the sketchbook and shoved the crumpled paper into his backpack. He should have stayed in bed.

Butters found his content mood disrupted by the mere mention of Mysterion. The damned vigilante had bested Professor Chaos once again.

Frustratingly, he still couldn’t escape the man with or without his mask. The name was never far from the tongues of South Park’s residents.

‘My Dad reckons he’s an arsehole. An I agree’.

‘Well your Dads an arsehole,’ Kenny snickered. He patted Butters knee to assure him he was half-joking.

‘They’re all arseholes!’ Butters snapped before he could catch himself. ‘S-sorry, I’m just tired’. He watched Kenny’s face rearrange itself into an aloof smile, nodding sagely. ‘I’m not very good company at the moment’.

‘You’re always good company, Butters'

'I could be better. Especially as you’re leaving!’

Kenny chewed his cheek, uncertain how to respond. Butters watched him smile mechanically.

‘I’m still going to be your friend, Leo. You can come and visit whenever and I’ll pop back too! I’m not abandoning you, silly. I’d be a right dick if I did’.

‘C-could I not make you stay?’

Butters felt selfish as soon as the words tumbled out. Of course Kenny wouldn’t stay for him; he had Kyle to live with and Karen to support.

‘I will always make time for you,’ Kenny smiled, the small gap between his front teeth prominent. ‘When Stan moves out you can always take his room too. He’s bound to get a place with Wendy in her second year’.

‘That’s a year away,’ Butters sighed, contemplating another year under his Father’s thumb. 

‘Or if you wanna house share sooner...I’ll help you look!' Kenny lightly punched Butters arm. ‘Would be pretty cool for you to live round the corner’.

‘Yeah-maybe’.

***  


Rumbles adorned the sky, jumping and roaring. Mysterion flinched backwards. The crack split the sky. Chaos advanced like an angry God. He felt triumphant as the snow crunched beneath his boots. The world grew blinding and succumbed to darkness again. Chaos advanced, swinging his hammer oh so gently.

It had been days since Chaos had been able to lure Mysterion out. He'd almost missed the gravelly voice, the mounting bruises and rage. The most suitable target for his rage.

A second and third crash sent Mysterion tumbling, tripping over his own cape. Chaos laughed at the pathetic sight. How could he have ever been afraid of this fool? Chaos raised his hammer to accept the lightning. His cloak flapped behind him. He was the pole and flag. 

Chaos kicked the groaning caped crusader, the body convulsing as conductor met target. Chaos could still feel the tingling beneath his fingers. He felt giddy.

The lightning leapt from his skin, sizzling against the snow. Chaos slammed his heel into Mysterion’s back and rolled him onto his front. He pushed the face into the snow, his boots muddying the hood.

It was as though the fleeing thunder clouds had stolen the sound from the sky. Chaos could feel his heartbeat quicken. He pulled Mysterion’s arm back, inhaling the muffled curse like the first drag of a cigarette. He clicked a pair of handcuffs around Mysterion’s slim wrists.

‘With these manacles you are powerless.’ Chaos wound his fingers in the captives hair and pulled.

Mysterion’s body dragged behind him, bound arms bent awkwardly. Chaos dropped the man easily, turning him to sit smugly on his chest. He felt like a warlord as he slashed at the M, peeling it away like a grim trophy.

Chaos plucked the swinging question mark from the hood with a coy smile; quietly amused at the irony. He dropped the calling cards beside him, just close enough Mysterion could see if he chose to.

Chaos fingered the snow-soaked hood slowly, entrapped by the widening of Mysterion’s blinking eyes. Dirty blonde hair spilled out over Chaos’s gloves.

‘We match,’ Chaos laughed darkly, running his fingers up through the mess of hair. It was damp with sweat but surprisingly soft. A hard patch of paint caught his attention and he zeroed in on the stark blue. He picked it none too gently from the strands. ‘You have paint in your hair,’ Chaos found himself stating, almost dumbly.

Mysterion bucked wildly, hipbones like daggers, his heartbeat quick beneath Chaos’s legs. Chaos captured Mysterion’s jaw firmly, squeezing until his fingertips felt numb, and tilted the vigilantes head back as though sharing a kiss. With his free hand, Chaos began unpeeling the domino mask.

‘Don’t. Don’t do this. Leo!’

Chaos could feel his blind eye burning behind the contact lens. It itched terribly.

Scared eyes stared back. Chaos stared back at the slightly too large eyes, fading from dark violets to hard blues. He took stock of the broken nose and blackened bruises slipping into jutting cheekbones.

The stare felt familiar to Chaos. Colder than any Butters knew. 

‘How..how do you know my name?’ Butters breathed.

Chaos slipped his fingers beneath the cowl, his own heart a maddening drum.

Mysterion stared wide eyed, voiceless, chapped lips bloodied behind fabric.

‘I’ve always known'.

Chaos pulled back the fabric from Mysterion’s mouth. He lingered on the small gap between the two front teeth.

‘No!’ Butters whispered, the domino mask coming away in his hands. Kenny McCormick blinked wide-eyed and miserable. ‘K-Kenny’.

‘I’m so sorry, Leo!’ Kenny sobbed, his lips quivering. Butters felt his heart wrench, his stomach drop to his boots. ‘I knew if any of your plans succeeded- you’d hate yourself’.

Butters climbed off Kenny, feeling sick.

‘No,’ Butters said. ‘I hate Mysterion’.

Kenny squirmed to sit up. He winced and spat blood. The glob sat heavy in the snow. 

‘We’re two sides of the same coin, Leo’.

Butters gave in to the panicked laugh. He doubled over clutching at his sides. He laughed until he cried and laughed some more. 

‘Help me up and we can talk,’ Kenny said. His voice felt wrong emanating from the guise of Mysterion. ‘Let me take you home and we’ll talk-'

‘Take me home!’ screeched Butters, pulling Kenny roughly to his feet. ‘You’re leaving me! You’re running away to live with..to live with Kyle! You’re leaving me here to die!’.

‘No!’ Kenny sobbed. ‘Oh, Leo. No'. Butters fisted a glove in Mysterion’s cape to keep him upright. ‘I’m moving away to help Karen with university. I’m going to support my boyfriend and best friend’.

Butters pulled Kenny into a hug, squeezing hard.

‘Who will protect the town from Chaos?’

Kenny exhaled slowly against Butters ear. His breathe rattled. ‘Mysterion will always be here’.

‘Who will be there for me?’ Butters choked, crying into Kenny’s shoulder. ‘W-who will help me?’

‘Leo. I love you so much. You’re _one_ of my best friends. I was never moving away to hurt you. Kyle was more than happy to drive back, so I’d visit whenever I wanted. I was always going to come back and see you’.

‘But...I’ve been hurting you!'

Kenny’s laugh ghosted against Butters ear. ‘I’ve hurt you too and I’m sorry for that’.

‘I need to get you home, Kenny. You’ll freeze to death’ Butters laughed wiping his nose loudly. ‘Oh hamburgers. Kenny. Can you ever forgive me?’

‘I already have, Leo,’ Kenny smiled, now at an arms length. ‘Might want to uncuff me before taking me home though. Kyle would have a heart attack'. 

Butters scooped Kenny into his arms, bridal style. Kenny shouted in alarm as Butters began to carry him home.

‘I kinda lost the key...’.


End file.
